Q&A …

… Jog Our Memories and Spirits, James � MFA Creative Writing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Though my Latin is every bit as poor as one would expect of someone who studied it one night a week with an ex-Jesuit after working all day in Boston, I’ve been deeply influenced by the classical poets, not to mention Dante.  One of the great satisfactions of trying to write poetry is the experience it gives of toiling in the same, long tradition that Homer, Virgil, and Dante worked and developed before me.  So, as I think of it, here are three particular joys of poetry: first, that sense of drawing the whole of truth, goodness, and beauty together in the unity of the art work; second, of being informed by it; and, third, the filial communion with the dead that participating in a tradition affords to us, that keeping of faith.

I believe that a review of mine of three books of poetry, including one by James Matthew Wilson, will run in The Inquirer on August 3.